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DLS host Reisa Levine with Sylvain Carle of the Notman House

Also featured this week is an interview with Sylvain Carle, one of the founders of The Notman House project, a wonderful start-up to restore a Montreal heritage building into a creative centre for local tech initiatives.

About William Notman – 1826 – 1891
Notman was a Canadian photographer and businessman.

He was an instance of an early photographer who clearly was figuring out what photography can mean, as a form of artistic expression, as a form of social chronicling, as a way of creating a sense of status — all the kinds of things that have flowed from works of art from time immemorial. He was trying to find ways to invest in photography. – Dennis Reid, Chief Curator, Art Gallery of Ontario

Notman Photographic Archives
Institutions and researchers from all over the world consult the Notman Photographic Archives. Through its thousands of images – landscapes, well-known people, families, places, events, activities – these historically invaluable Archives provide a visual history of Montreal, Quebec and Canada from the 1840s to the present.

Notman House ProjectFollow the project on Twitter
Project Notman will be an attractive and energizing location for the web entrepreneurs of Montreal to develop and iterate their business ideas and beta products. The property will provide an array of collaborative work and meeting spaces, curated by members who will promote the exchange of ideas and knowledge. Spaces include small offices and co-working desks that can be rented by the hour or the month and a variety of event and meeting rooms for residents, members and guests, as well as an Internet cafe open to the public…

Our lives are being profoundly influenced by the Web and the way in which individuals and communities embrace internet technologies will have an ever-growing impact on their future economic and social prosperity. Notman House is a glorious example of Montreal’s prosperous past and when restored to its former glory, this property will play an important part in Montreal’s future; providing an open, collaborative environment that will ensure we contribute to the evolution of the Web, rather than simply consuming its content..

Private fundraising for Notman House is being coordinated through a recently established not-for-profit entity called The OSMO Foundation.

Sylvain Carle and John Stokes from Startup Camp Montreal

The OSMO Foundation, a non-profit entity, was established in July 2009 to fund, by way of grants, grassroots initiatives that support community building and networking. The Foundation was created by investors, technology and media executives and the community itself to support the growth and development of Montreal’s next generation of technology entrepreneurs.

Kavita Ajwani of TaskHire.ca – one of the 5 ‘Pitchers’ at Startup Camp Montreal

Startup Camp Montreal
This is the seventh edition of Startup Camp Montreal, an event dedicated to everything Startup. It is the forum where early stage companies, investors and on-lookers alike can share information and validate pitches live.

Five startups have been selected to give a brief 5 minute presentation on their startup following which, a panel of 3 startup experts will ask 5 minutes of questions, and then the audience will ask questions and give 5 minutes of valuable feedback to the startup in an open forum format.

Even with the change in population, I think it’s simply acknowledging the speed at which technology is reaching a large number of people. 150 million people is still a huge number and it’s impressive that something like Facebook managed to achieve that as fast as it did.

Reisa said: 2011.01.24 15:01

Thanks Zeke for your comment, it’s true that this graphic does not take into account world population and how that would affect these stats. I also had a hard time locating the original source of the graphic (Portfolio Research ?), although it turns up in countless blogs and tech sites…. so you may have something there. But i still think that Facebook is a ‘game changer’ in terms of communications technologies. Time will tell i guess.

The graphic is useless. In 1965 there were (roughly) 3.5 billion people alive. In 1997 there were (about) 6 billion people alive. Now it is (almost) 7 billion. Tell me about “game changing” when Facebook is used by 4% of the world’s population.